“Marimekko is about living, not pretending. Marimekko is about understanding and accepting the beauty of life just as we encounter it every day.” ~ Mika Ihamuotila
This is the time of the year when I start shaking the cobwebs out of my head, and my home, and look toward the coming of Spring. There is no happier time, and no happier place, for me to be in the next few months than in the bedroom of our Boston place, around the two to three PM hours when the sun is slanting deeply through the slatted blinds of the Bay Window, and the curtains are parted to let in a new breeze. Every year, I try to do something to freshen the palette of the place – a new piece of furniture, a new group of towels, a fresh coat of paint. At its most basic, it’s just another variation on Spring cleaning. And the time to prepare is now.
This year, I have my sight set on a new bed set, to go along with our new bed. We’ve been using the same Calvin Klein Bamboo bedding since 1998 – and while it’s a classic, it’s time for something new. For some time, I’ve been flirting rather violently with the Marimekko bedding line at Crate & Barrel. Part of me – the very heart of my most intrinsic instincts – was instantly drawn to the bold colors, their courageous juxtaposition, and the almost-childlike strokes of abstract design. The other part of me – the more pragmatic, thoughtful, quiet side that refuses to give in to a trendy look that will be annoying and out of style a scant year later – has always had an issue with the line. Over the past few years, however, I’ve found both parts come together to meet in a happy middle. (It’s also been long enough to know whether or not I would tire of it, and I haven’t – if anything, my initial amusement and delight with it has only grown and deepened into something more – which is the best way to tell whether or not you can live with something for a while.)
On my last trip to Crate & Barrel, I saw the above bedding set, named ‘Lumimarja Celery‘. It perfectly captures the spirit of the bedroom in the earliest of Spring – light, airy, fresh, and slightly whimsical. (“Lumimarja” translates to ‘snowberry’, the inside of which looks like a snowflake – a fitting bridge between Winter and Spring, lending it a year-round usefulness. I remember the snowberry bushes in the side-yard of my childhood home, and picking their fruit on summer days by the pool.) This set retains the touches of nature that were such an important part of the previous duvet, but brings it to a different plane, both in its abstraction, and its punch of bright green color. As fortune would have it, the color of the trunk and branches is almost an exact match to the silk headboard already in place, so the signs have once again aligned, as they tend to do when you’re on the right track in matters of design.
To add another accent, and prevent things from getting too matchy-matchy (the death-knell for so many bedding collections) I also found this Azure line, from which I intend to cull a few pillows so as not to forsake all bits of blue from the bedroom. They have a nice linen aspect to their shams, giving another texture, as well as color, to the bed.
